About me

This blogname was derived from the novel The Secret Life Of Saeed The Pessoptimist by the Palestinian Israeli Emile Habiby: absurdism as weapon against the (ir)realities of daily life in Palestine/Israel. (The subtitle is from a book by Dutch author Renate Rubinstein. It could as well be my motto).
My real name is Martin (Maarten Jan) Hijmans. I've been covering the ME since 1977 and have been a correspondent in Cairo. I started my 'Abu Pessoptimist' blog in January 2009 out of anger during the onslaught in Gaza. The other one, The Pessoptmist, is meant to be a sister version in English. (En voor de Nederlandstaligen: ik wilde in november 2009 een tweede blog in het Engels beginnen en ontdekte te laat dat als je één account hebt, een profiel dan meteen ook voor allebei de blogs geldt. Vandaar dat het nu ineens in het Engels is... So sorry.)

Friday, July 13, 2012

More than 200 killed in new Syrian massacre

Treimseh before the bloodbath started.

AFP reports: Syrian government troops using tanks and helicopters massacred more than 150 people in the central province of Hama, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said, while a rebel leader put the toll at more than 200. Government troops on Thursday bombarded the village using tanks and helicopters, according to the Observatory, which earlier put the death toll at more than 100.

Observatory chief Rami Abdel Rahman
told AFP by telephone that the bodies of 30 villagers had already been
identified following the sustained attack, which brought the day's total
death toll in the conflict-torn nation to over 200.

Rebel leader Abu Mohamad,
chief of a group based further to the north, told AFP early Friday that
the attack using helicopters, tanks and multiple rocket-launchers had
killed more than 200 people in the village.

Abu Mohamad said he had been in
phone contact with a resident of Treimsa who told him that government
forces were on hills a few kilometres (miles) outside the town.

The official Syrian newsagency Sana merntioned the killing, but as could be expected gave a rather different account: It said that
'Tens of terrorists overrun the village of al-Trimsa in Hama Countryside yesterday, killing or wounding tens of Syrian civilians. The terrorists, according to eye witnesses who appeared on Syrian TV to narrate the reality of events on the ground, ransacked, destroyed and burned scores of the village houses before the competent authorities arrive to the village.'
It is not possible to independently verify death tolls in Syria. According to The Observatory more than 17,000 people have been killed since the uprising erupted in mid-March last year.